Planning a Professional Holiday Light Installation: Timeline, Power, and What to Ask

The short answer: early November, and check your amps first

Two decisions cause most of the problems people call about in December: booking late, and designing a display the house cannot power. In the Treasure Valley the usable install window runs from roughly the second week of October through Thanksgiving. Before mid-October you are hanging lights on a house that still looks like fall. After Thanksgiving the valley locks into inversion, freezing fog rimes north- and northwest-facing roofs, and a 6:12 pitch stops being safe to work. The power side is simpler than people expect and far more limiting. A 200-foot roofline in incandescent C9 bulbs draws about 11.7 amps, which is an entire 15-amp circuit gone on one run. The same 200 feet in commercial LED C9s draws about 1.2 amps. If you are lighting more than the front eave, that single number decides whether you need an electrician before you need an installer.

The real calendar, September through January

September is when good crews measure, quote, and lock dates, and it is when installers who supply their own product place orders. October is the work month. Boise's average first hard freeze lands in the middle of the month, but daytime highs sit in the 50s and 60s and roofs are dry, which is exactly the condition you want a crew working in. Book by November 1 if you want a date you chose instead of a date you were assigned. From late November the valley goes under inversion: a low stratus deck, freezing fog, and shingles that stay slick past noon. December installs still happen, but lead times commonly stretch past two weeks and any storm pushes the whole board back a day. Get your takedown date in writing at booking, not in January. Most valley crews pull lights between January 2 and the end of the month.

The power math that decides how much roofline you can light

Run this before you buy a single strand. A 15-amp household circuit delivers 1,800 watts, but holiday lights are a continuous load, so the working ceiling is 80 percent of that: 1,440 watts, or 12 amps. A 20-amp circuit gives you 1,920 watts, 16 amps. Now price the roofline. Incandescent C9 bulbs draw 7 watts each at 12-inch spacing, so every foot of eave costs 7 watts. Two hundred feet is 1,400 watts and the circuit is spent. Commercial LED C9s draw 0.5 to 0.8 watts, so the same 200 feet lands near 150 watts. That gap is also why incandescent sets stop at two or three strands end to end, limited by the 5-amp fuse in the plug, while LED sets commonly chain 40 or more. Every outdoor receptacle needs GFCI protection and a while-in-use cover, and cords should be outdoor-rated SJTW: 16-gauge to 25 feet, 14-gauge to 50, 12-gauge to 100.

What to ask before money changes hands

How do you attach to the roofline? The only right answer is clips that grip the gutter lip or slide under a shingle tab. Staples into fascia and nails through architectural shingle both create leaks, and you will be finding those holes years later. Can you send a certificate of insurance showing general liability and workers' compensation? Height work belongs on their policy, not your homeowner's. Who owns the lights, and what does year two cost? Which circuit are we on, and how many amps is the finished display pulling? A crew that cannot answer that has not done the math. Is a midseason service call included, and how fast? Something always fails in the second week of December. Is takedown included, and on what date? Do you store the strands? And is the quote per linear foot or per roofline, because those two methods produce very different numbers on a gabled house.

Lease, buy, or hang what you already own

Full-service pricing, where the installer supplies commercial-grade product, hangs it, services it, takes it down and stores it, commonly runs $3 to $7 per linear foot the first season and drops to roughly $2 to $4 on renewals, since the product cost is already spent. A 150-foot front roofline therefore lands somewhere around $450 to $1,050 in year one in most markets. Buying your own commercial C9 LED runs about $1.50 to $3 a foot in product, plus clips at 10 to 25 cents each and an outdoor-rated timer at $20 to $40, and it lasts eight to ten seasons. Reflekt quotes per roofline rather than per foot, because a compact two-story with four gables carries far more corners and transitions than a wide ranch with the same footprint. We are Meridian-based, fully insured, and rated 4.9 across 115+ Google reviews. Get the measured number before install day, not after.

When to skip the pro, and what nobody can fix

Here is the part that costs us work. If you own a single-story ranch, the front eave is reachable from a six-foot step ladder, and the footing is level, hang your own lights. Clips, a good LED C9 run, and an outdoor timer is a Saturday, and you keep the money. Hiring out earns its keep on second-story gables and steep runs where the ladder stands in a flowerbed twenty feet below you. Second, do not pay anyone to hang strands you already suspect. Incandescent sets past five or six seasons, and any wire with a cracked or chalky jacket, belong in the recycling. Third, some things no light crew can solve. If your only exterior receptacle is on the front porch, nobody should run a cord through a window sash to reach the back roofline. That is a $200 to $400 electrician call, and it comes first. Same with soft fascia or gutter pulling away. And we do not put anyone on iced shingles at any price.